


Synchronicity

by wendelah1



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Episode Tag, F/M, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-22
Updated: 2015-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:18:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4176135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wendelah1/pseuds/wendelah1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Whether fate or a fortuitous series of events had led to this moment, she was here. And so was he. A missing scene for "all things."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Synchronicity

**Author's Note:**

  * For [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Paper Cup Aquarium](https://archiveofourown.org/works/15556) by [leiascully](https://archiveofourown.org/users/leiascully/pseuds/leiascully). 



Synchronicity 

Last Saturday, when Mulder left for England to chase crop circles, he knew that Dana Scully was still firmly in the skeptic column. He figured that after everything she'd seen, if she wasn't a believer by now, it wasn't going to happen. It wasn't even an issue anymore as far as he was concerned. Hard-headed as always, Scully had refused his invitation to accompany him. She'd munched her salad during his slide presentation and scoffed at his computer-generated fractal images. "No, thank you," she'd told him, except less politely. She'd announced that she already had plans for her weekend: after finishing up her notes on the autopsy, she would be taking her Saturday night bath.

As it turned out, Scully had been right: the crop circle predictions were a bust. In fact, the entire trip had turned out to be a complete waste of time. As soon as his plane landed back in Washington, he headed for their office, intending to see Scully. He could tell her that she was right, for once. That would make her happy. But she wasn't at work; the message she'd left indicated that she'd taken some personal time. So he headed out to look for her, but she found him first. Except she wasn't looking for Mulder at all—she was trying to catch up to a nurse who worked at Washington National Hospital. Scully commiserated with him over his crop circle debacle in her own inimitable way ("Sometimes nothing happens for a reason, Mulder"), and invited herself over for tea and sympathy. 

Scully didn't seem the least bit surprised when Mulder told her that his Avebury crop circles were illusory, taking his news with gracious equanimity. Mulder, however, was astonished to hear what had happened to Scully. Almost from the moment Mulder had left her back in the office, one inexplicable coincidence had followed another, and they all involved the same woman. The nurse who'd handed Waterston's X-ray to Scully, was also the pedestrian who'd caused Scully to slam on the brakes and avoid hitting a truck. The nurse's third appearance ended with Scully finding herself in a Buddhist temple, where she'd had a vision. 

Seven years they'd worked together, and Mulder had never heard the whole story behind Scully's decision to quit medicine. He wondered if anyone had, other than Waterston. The official explanation, the one in her personnel file, had always sounded fishy to him: "I saw the FBI as a place where I could distinguish myself." Well, he was hardly in a position to throw stones. His own motivations for joining up had been as non-traditional as they come: "You see, Sir, I believe my sister was abducted by aliens."

Her vision in the Buddhist temple sounded to Mulder almost like a near death experience, minus the nearly dying part. It was Mulder's request that had inadvertently placed Scully at the intersection where she'd nearly gotten killed, too. Thousands of miles and an ocean separating them, he was still influencing her life, and not necessarily in a good way. 

He could hear Scully's voice in his brain, admonishing him for his audacity. How dare he cast himself as the central character in what was clearly her story. "Not everything is about you, Mulder." _Sorry, Scully._ He was just calling it the way he saw it.

What Scully was describing were the most clear-cut examples of non-random coincidences—synchronicity—that he'd encountered, personally or professionally. It was obvious to Mulder that he'd played a role in what had happened, though perhaps more because of his absence. As long as Mulder was there, Dr. Scully had to maintain her stance: she was for scientific investigation and against all things paranormal. Without Mulder's unwavering belief to push back against, she was free to choose another path. 

He couldn't help being amazed that she had made the decision to bring a non-traditional healer to Waterston's bedside. Of course it was because of her encounter with God—in a Buddhist temple, yet! The God part wasn't so surprising—Scully's religious convictions were well-known to him—but as far as Mulder knew, she considered all systems of healing apart from Western medicine to be quackery. This was the kind of thing Melissa would have approved of, not her sister. Even leaving aside the religious aspects, the experience sounded like a pretty damn big deal to him. Why was she insisting it wasn't? Not five minutes after telling Mulder about her spiritual revelation, she was already walking it back. Yeah, he should have seen that coming.

His reply to her didn't exactly take matters to a higher plane. "You had a vision. That's like saying you're having David Crosby's baby." He regretted that last sentence almost before he'd uttered it. What the hell was wrong with him? Scully wasn't having anyone's baby. He knew it, she knew it, and Dr. Parenti, the fertility specialist she'd consulted, knew it. Fortunately for Mulder, she let him off the hook by not reacting. 

He'd just begun his monologue when it turned into a soliloquy, as Mulder looked over to discover that Scully had fallen asleep. It wasn't the first time she'd dozed out in the middle of his philosophizing, and it wouldn't be the last. Tenderly, he brushed a lock of hair back from her cheek, and covered her with a blanket. For a few minutes, he stayed at her side, watching her sleep. Mulder loved when this happened, though admitting it to himself embarrassed him. He didn't have to sneak covert glances. He could gaze at Scully to his heart's content. 

Mulder had first been introduced to the concept of synchronicity was during his time at Oxford. It wasn't part of his formal studies, of course. Long before Mulder had graduated, Carl Jung's theories had fallen out of favor in academic circles. He'd discovered Jung wholly by accident, really. After escorting Phoebe to a party at her friend's home, instead of socializing with strangers, he'd found himself in the owner's library. He was browsing through the psychology section when he'd spotted the complete works of Carl Jung. Purely by chance, he'd selected volume 8, which fell open to the essay, _Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle_. For the remainder of the evening, Mulder had holed up in the library. Enthralled, he'd raced through the entire essay in one sitting. The next time he'd been in a used bookstore, he'd run into it again, this time as a separate volume, published in 1960 by a university press. 

Synchronicity was the word Jung had coined to describe the occurrence of a meaningful coincidence in time. Jung was writing about coincidences that weren't coincidences at all. He'd also used the word to describe paranormal phenomena. Maybe reading Jung's essay was what sparked his interest in parapsychology, leading him eventually to Dr. Werner's office for regression hypnosis, and ultimately to his life's work: the X-Files. 

After one last, longing look at her, he forced himself off the couch. Though she'd invited herself over for tea, they'd never gotten around to drinking any. He was now too wired to sleep. The Scully voice in his head suggested maybe a nice, relaxing cup of herbal tea would do the trick. He filled the electric kettle and turned it on. After setting out a mug, he rummaged around in the cabinet until he found the box of "Tension Tamer." Where the heck had that come from? he wondered, examining the package. He didn't drink much hot tea, but when he did, it was always Tetley. The scent of lemon grass triggered his memory. The herbal concoction was Scully's, of course, left behind after one of her many visits to his apartment as he recuperated from injuries. There'd been too many of those—injuries, not visits—over the years. He must be getting older, because he sure didn't bounce back the way he used to.

Scully had once told him that working on the X-Files was like taking two steps forwards and three steps back, an exercise in frustration, if not futility. He didn't agree with her, but he understood what she meant. By definition, X-Files cases were difficult to solve. They'd follow up a lead only to find the evidence destroyed. Witnesses came forward, only to disappear—or be killed. 

Maybe because their personal relationship was so closely linked to their work, their progression toward intimacy hadn't exactly gone smoothly. Take the mess she'd gotten herself into running off with Cancer Man. Mulder had made a bad situation worse by behaving like "a disrespectful, controlling jackass," as Scully had informed him in no uncertain terms. On their next case, Skinner had pulled him onto a different investigation, right in the middle of their stake-out. This had left Scully to cope with the seedy underbelly of Washington, D.C. on her own, while he ate home-cooked meals and had his shirts laundered for free. Scully had not been pleased. Mulder had conceived of the trip to England as a sort of peace offering, but she hadn't seen it that way. She'd thought it was just another excuse to keep them running. Maybe she had a point.

The tea kettle whistled and shut itself off. Mulder poured hot water over the teabag and covered the mug with a saucer so it wouldn't cool down. The package directions said to let it steep for eight minutes. He would sit at the kitchen table to wait and ponder. 

Mulder knew the woman was no ordinary nurse, but he couldn't say for certain what she was. Jung would call her a manifestation of Scully's unconscious mind. Of course, he'd probably say the same thing about Mulder's past-life regression. Under hypnosis, Mulder'd described Scully as an authority figure: his father in one lifetime, and his Sargent during the Civil War reincarnation. Naturally Scully thought it was a bunch of hooey. He'd been convinced at the time, but now he was mostly on the fence about it. Even if all of it were true, so what? In this lifetime, he and Scully were equals, comrades-in-arms. She'd told Mulder that she'd left medicine and joined the FBI to get away from Daniel Waterston. At any time, Scully could have requested a transfer off the X-Files, and no one, including Mulder, would have thought less of her for doing so. But she hadn't. She'd chosen to stay. And that was the way he wanted it. He didn't want fate to determine their future together; he didn't even want the appearance of it. 

For so long, they'd been teetering on the brink of physical intimacy without capitulating. Maybe it didn't have to be this way, not anymore. There was one more coincidence that wasn't a coincidence, and this one closed the circle. The fourth time Scully had thought she'd spotted the nurse, she'd run after her, just like before. This time she'd managed to catch up with her, but when Scully had grabbed her shoulder, the person who'd turned around wasn't whom she'd been expecting. Instead, she'd found him. It could only happen that way because he'd taken an earlier flight back from England. Maybe he was crazy for thinking so, but didn't it seem like events were lining up in their favor at last? His departure and return were the bookends for her adventure. It was synchronicity. Mulder was certain that Jung would have agreed.

Perhaps, all along, it had been Scully's unresolved feelings for Waterston which had kept them from moving forward, romantically speaking. Mulder liked that theory, probably because it took him off the hook for seven years of stalling around. So, it was settled, and Waterston was officially out of the picture. No one was dying or injured or in immediate danger, that Mulder knew of, at least. He didn't have to come up with a slide show and a flimsy excuse for a case to be with Scully. He could just ask her to dinner and a movie, like a normal person, and see how things went from there. Whether fate or a fortuitous series of events had led to this moment, she was here. And so was he. Mulder picked up his cup of tea, walked back to the couch, and sat down again next to Scully. True, it had taken him nearly seven years to work up to kissing her, and he'd still needed New Year's Eve as an excuse. This time, he promised himself, they wouldn't have so long to wait.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to idella and idunnoh for their encouraging words and beta. I couldn't have done it without you.


End file.
